take the makeup off your eyes
by crystalballbenny
Summary: Ethan needs glasses and Benny needs to stop being an asshole about it. Bethan!


_**Hot damn it's been too long guys- I sincerely apologize for that. I literally have twenty eight different Bethan ideas just floating around and I haven't been getting to any of them. This is a celebration of sorts because I myself just got new glasses and they're fucking awesome and I was in a Bethan mood, you know? So, here you go :) Also: I'll have some news at the end and it's not that amazing but I'm happy about it! **_

_**Title is from the song Porno by Arcade Fire (**__**ﾉ◕ヮ◕**__**)**__**ﾉ**__***:**__**･ﾟ✧**_

_**~.~.~**_

It starts just like everything else does: at school, where he's most likely to make a fool of himself and not have everyone forget about it. He could always get Benny to play a little memory trick, but the last time that happened they made their tenth grade history teacher forget everything about _history_, and yeah, that wasn't good at all.

They're sitting in class together (Algebra, which Ethan's fondly nicknamed Hell), when he looks down at his book and realizes he can't see what problem he's on.

Ethan leans over, and nudges Benny with his foot. "What number is that? Ten?"

Benny looks at him, rather than the book, with concern. But after Ethan's frazzled expression deepens, Benny's gaze flickers down to the book where Ethan's got his finger pointed.

"E, that's seventeen."

This causes Ethan to squint even harder and duck down, eyebrows quirked together. It still looks an awful lot like a ten, but Benny's never lied to him before, and there would be no reason for him to start now. So he goes on to write the problem down, but is interrupted from solving the equation when Benny's lips tickle against his ear.

"That's not a five, either. That's an eight next to that x."

And then it hits Ethan like a ton of bricks to the stomach- he can't _see_, for God's sakes.

He retches around to face Benny head on, who Ethan thinks looks slightly amused even though he can't be sure because he can't fucking _see his face_. His hands find their way to the front of Benny's jacket, and suddenly they're nose to nose.

"I can't see," Ethan wheezes out, looking wild and cute and full of raw panic. "Christ, Benny, I can't read the _problems_."

Biting his lip, Benny thinks that it would be very inappropriate to begin grinning or laughing at Ethan's freak-out, so instead he gently pries Ethan's hands off of his shoulders and holds them in between his own.

"Ethan," he tells him slowly, head tilting forwards. "Calm down, dude. We'll just go and get you an eye exam after school, no problemo."

Ethan's wide eyes grow even bigger at that prospect. "An eye exam? No! That's like sealing the deal, Ben- you know, admitting to the crime, accepting the failure, picking the red pill over the blue pill and not getting into _The Matrix_."

"You're not getting kicked out of _Matrix_, Ethan, you're getting glasses."

The idea alone makes Ethan want to faint right there in the middle of Mrs. Mackie's class, one of those dramatic pass-outs that cause everything to fall with him and people to rise out of their seats and begin screaming for someone to call for an ambulance.

"But then I'll be even _more _of a nerd," Ethan whines, and Benny rolls his eyes with a small sigh. "I've already got the action figures and_ Star Trek _posters and even the damn graphic t-shirts. Getting glasses is like putting the icing on the cake that is my social rank."

Benny pats his hands fondly, before setting them back in Ethan's lap. "Ethan, you love being a geek and you know it."

"But, Benny-"

"Suck it up, Buttercup."

Erica snorts from the seat ahead, and with a teasing smile, snarks at them. "You two are so gay."

Benny responds by smacking a great big kiss right on Ethan's cheek in the middle of class. The episode makes Ethan completely forget about his sight problem and instead makes him think about how much he loves Benny, even if he cheeks are now the color of roses.

_**~.~.~**_

"Visions tests are terrible." Ethan complains, after coming out of the testing room. His eyes sting and there are still spots from the lights they had shined directly into them. "They blew air right into my eyes, Benny, and it hurt like hell."

"You poor baby." Benny replies offhandedly, flipping the page in his magazine. "Hey, did you know that women that get pregnant at the age of thirty are more likely to crave pickles during the second trimester than those of any other group?"

"No," Ethan snorts, leaning his head against Benny's warm shoulder. "And I never wanted to."

They stay in that position for ten minutes, waiting for Ethan's test results to come back; Ethan describes the procedure he underwent moments before, while Benny reads _Birds & Bees _magazine, and _Ghost Whisperer _plays in the background. He doesn't admit it out loud, but Ethan's glad Benny's there with him, because he wouldn't have come on his own. He'd heard about eye exams from other friends of theirs and they made him terrified to ever step foot into a optomologist building.

Even if it was just looking at a hot air balloon picture while a machine scanned his eyes, _still_. It's always nice knowing there's someone in the waiting room to coddle you when you're done.

Not that Benny is _coddling _Ethan- he's merely listening and nodding his shaggy head and reading odd facts about women when they're pregnant.

"Ethan, your results are back."

Ethan looks up at Dr. Colt, sees the papers in her hands, and swallows heavily.

"I'm going to need glasses, aren't I?"

She nods. "But only for reading. You can still see things far away and at a normal distance, but up close your eyesight is beginning to decline."

When he sighs, Ethan deflates like an air mattress being jumped on and popped, and slouching in his chair, he takes this information rather well.

Dr. Colt continues. "We'll have to dilate your pupils to get a complete reading on your prescription, but while we set it up, you can go and pick out a pair of frames."

As she walks away, Ethan gets to his feet, and tells Benny to stay where he is.

"You'll run rampant and knock stuff down and laugh at me," Ethan tells him, and Benny has the audacity to look _completely _innocent. "Don't even try to pretend that you won't."

Instead of whining, Benny sets his magazine aside and pulls Ethan down onto his lap. Ethan makes a surprised noise, but gladly lets himself be manhandled onto Benny's long legs and warm body.

"That's okay," Benny grins against his mouth, not kissing but touching. "I want them to be a surprise."

Ethan grins back. "I'll make sure they're the super sophisticated kind that make me look like Ewan McGregor in _Osage County_."

They laugh together, before Benny indulges Ethan and kisses him sweetly. They're just lucky that no one's kicked them out yet.

"Get goin'." Benny shoves Ethan right back off, and swats at his ass affectionately. "I have a show to watch."

"Benny, for the last time, _Pretty Little Liars _is not a good show for you to watch."

"I'm watching it to get better my deduction skills."

"Or because you have a crush on Ashley Benson."

Benny just laughs again and Ethan stumbles away, heart fluttering in his chest.

There are a million and one different styles of glasses when Ethan makes it out into the lobby, and his head spins just looking at all of them. There are more styles for women than there are for men, but the ones for him to chose from still take up three walls, floor to ceiling. Ethan doesn't even know where to _start_.

And this must be really obvious, because a girl with curls sprouting out of her head and a dimpled smile comes over to him with a look of empathy.

"First time?"

Ethan nods, and when he sees his reflection in a mirror, he looks a lot like Bambi.

Her smiles widens. "That how I felt the first time I got glasses. There were just so _many _and I didn't know which ones would look okay on me."

She's wearing a pair that are almost completely circular, like Harry Potter's, but wing out at the ends to make them look like cat eyes. On most others, they would look ridiculous, but on this girl they look cool.

"I'm Kirsty. I'll help you out."

Ethan gets dragged around the display shelves by Kirsty, and many pairs of glasses are shoved onto his face.

"You have an oval shaped face and dark hair and eyes, so we should get you a dark pair of glasses." she tells him, ebony curls dancing around wildly. "It'll accent your good looks and won't make you look like an idiot."

"Thanks," Ethan mutters, but smiles gratefully at her.

She thinks about it for a moment, before picking two pairs off of the first and second shelves. Handing the pair in her left to Ethan, he puts them on to see that they're square, thin, and dark brown. They look good.

"Those will be simple and easy to miss, if you're looking for a pair without drawing attention. But for those who do see them, like your boyfriend reading that parenting magazine, they'll find them nice."

Ethan flushes and plucks them off, trading away for the other pair in her right hand. They're the hipster glasses, thicker and black and going from below the eyebrow to above the cheekbone.

Kirsty grins wolfishly when he gets them on, and Ethan already knows which ones she likes better.

"Those make you look smart and dashing, sweetie. Nothing else to be said."

Ethan looks at himself in the mirror, and has to agree; they curve gently around his face, widen his eyes, and make him look cool and smart, not dorky.

Smiling widely, Ethan takes them off and holds them up in triumph. "I'll take these ones."

"Good choice," Kirsty appraises him, and skips off to the counter, looking like a Canadian version of Merida. Ethan laughs after her, and then goes off to get ready to get his pupils dilated.

Benny looks up when he enters back into the waiting room, and gives him a lopsided grin. Ethan thinks they look like idiots but then thinks that Benny's beautiful.

"How'd it go?"

Ethan winks. "It's a surprise."

_**~.~.~**_

The good mood disappears in the course of twenty minutes, though, after his pupils dilate and he can't see anything. All of the lights are absolutely blinding and Benny says he looks like he just had sex, and then causes Ethan to promise none of said activity if Benny doesn't stop acting like a dick. That sends Benny off into another torrent of innuendoes and Ethan's just glad they're in the parking lot already, and not inside.

"Ethan, you look like one of those cops on the crappy shows- you're wearing sunglasses at night."

"The streetlights are giving me a headache." Ethan grumbles, and curls farther into the door, back to Benny and irritance rolling off of him in waves. "Sorry that my eyes are hypersensitive, you asshole."

But Benny's not really being an asshole; while he watches _Pretty Little Liars _that night, he rubs Ethan's head and neck, spoons him from behind, and even though Ethan thinks they look incredibly sappy, it feels nice.

He falls asleep halfway through the new episode, listening to Benny chattering to Spencer and feeling warm and soothed.

_**~.~.~**_

"Ethan, please let me see them."

"No- you're just going to laugh at me."

Benny sighs, and thunks his head against the bathroom door, wondering why his boyfriend is getting paranoid now; they've seen worse, and can fart in front of each other. Nothing should further hinder their comfort around each other.

Ethan is currently locked inside the bathroom, looking at himself with his new glasses on and cursing his eyes. They looked good at the store, but now, in the intimacy of his own house, with Benny waiting on the other side of the door, Ethan's highly regretting his choice.

"I should have gotten the sleek ones." he groans, and smacks his head against the mirror.

"You can't hide in there forever!" Benny shouts.

Ethan shouts back. "Yes I can! There's a toilet and water in here!"

"Come out already!" Benny yells, for lack of anything to say back, because Ethan's right.

He doesn't want to at all- Ethan just wants to forget about the whole situation and move on, and he knows it's because he's scared that Benny will think he looks like a moron. It's dumb to think but Ethan just can't _help _himself.

But he also doesn't want to stay cooped up in the bathroom for the rest of the night (because Benny will eventually break the door down and see him, anyways), so he takes a deep breath and calls back in a shaky voice.

"Promise you won't laugh?"

"Ethan, you didn't laugh at me when I rented that God-awful powder blue tux for the dance in freshman year- the one your mother got a hundred pictures of. If you didn't laugh at me then, I won't laugh at you know."

It makes him feel better, admittedly, and smiling now, Ethan stands up straight and fixes his glasses on his nose, still unused to the awkward weight.

"Fine. Move so I don't step on you."

He listens as Benny scrambles to his feet, and blowing out air through his teeth, Ethan thinks _Here goes nothing_.

The door opens easily, and for a moment, there's silence and intense staring. Benny's nearly stepping on Ethan's feet he's so close, and he can feel the other's gaze like a thousand bolts of electricity to the forehead.

"They're ugly, aren't they?" Ethan whispers miserably. "I _hate _them."

He feels rather than sees Benny move, and suddenly his face is cupped in between two large, warm hands that attach to the rest of his best friend. Ethan looks up, teeth grating on his bottom lip.

"They're awesome," Benny breathes, and his eyes are shining so brightly that Ethan is taken aback more by them than what is said. "You look great."

Ethan winces. "I do?"

"You're so fucking _hot _in those." Benny crowds even closer, but Ethan hardly notices through the pounding of his heart. "I love them."

"They don't look dumb?"

Benny grins, deeply and widely and to the side, and he looks like the goddamn Cheshire Cat, all dark and mysterious and downright _seductive_. "They're sexy." Then he kisses Ethan chastely. "_You're _sexy."

Ethan groans as Benny smashes them up against the wall, and adjusting his legs so that one of Benny's slots in between his own, he brings Benny in for another kiss. His hands are curled possessively in Benny's Henley, keeping them impossibly close together, and he can't even remember why he was feeling so upset in the first place. Benny's kissing him, deep, sweet and dirty, and he can't even think of his _name_, let alone the embarrassment clouding him earlier.

They only pull away because the front door opens, and Jane's voice follows it. So smiling and laughing breathlessly, they stumble into Ethan's room, still connected knee to forehead and looking like absolutely lunatics.

Sinking onto the bed, they sprawl out together, Benny's head on the pillows and Ethan curled up on top of him.

"You smudged my glasses." Ethan tells him, uncaring and not moving to take them off.

Benny shrugs, before removing them himself and wiping away the smear with his shirt end. "You bought the ones that drove me off the cliff of sexual desire, so we're even."

"Gross." Ethan laughs, and scrunches his nose up as Benny puts the glasses back on.

Benny makes a face back at him, and scoops Ethan up to pull him closer. "Not gross. More proper way to say turned on."

"So, are you saying you only like me for my looks now?"

Benny listens as Ethan asks this question, takes his the eyebrow raise that makes Ethan even more attractive, and thinks that the boy is going to _kill _him.

"No." The glasses come off yet again, and Ethan watches curiously as Benny sets them on his dresser. "They just add on to your appeal. They're another part of you."

But then he crushes their mouths together, and kissing like the two hormone-ridden teenagers they are, it ruins Benny's wise words.

"And also," the taller boy gasps between kisses. "I didn't want to break them making out with you."

Ethan snorts. "Charming."

Benny shrugs and tangling his fingers in Ethan's untamable hair, he slots them together again and they kiss until neither can remember where their mouth ends and the other's begins. The sheets get rumpled and their clothes are messy, but Ethan further forgets his hate for his new glasses.

He might even go as far as to say that he loves them.

_**~.~.~**_

At dinner that night, Samantha and Ross are happily oblivious to Ethan's gnarled hair and Benny's messy clothing, and instead ask Ethan about his new glasses.

He pulls them out, and as he puts them on, wickedly squeezes Benny's upper thigh under the table.

"I've been told they look good on me."

Samantha smiles widely. "They do, honey."

"You look great, Ethan." Ross agrees.

Benny waits until they're not paying attention to lean in and tickle Ethan's ear with his lips again. "Told you so."

"Funny." Ethan murmurs back, poking at his green beans. "You weren't saying much ten minutes ago."

He can feel the corners of Benny's mouth turning up and regrets falling into Benny's trap like he always does.

"That's because I was too busy sucking a hickey into your sternum."

Ethan turns a ruddy pink color, deep in his cheeks and ears, and when Jane asks him what's wrong, he blames it on his chicken going down the wrong way. Benny just rumbles next to him and takes his hand under the table, where it had begun to creep higher.

_**~.~.~**_

The only downside to getting glasses is now whenever he puts them on, Ethan thinks about Benny shoving him up against the wall and kissing him filthily, and it gets him hot and bothered at the most inconvenient times.

Benny can tell, because he gives Ethan a wicked look whenever he sees his boyfriend fiddling with his glasses and glancing at Benny with a hitch in his chest.

Leaning over, he pretends to be helping Ethan with the problem but insteads eggs him on.

"Can you tell it's a ten now, Ethan? Or are you too busy thinking about kissing me in your hallway to do math?"

He expects to see Ethan blush from head to toe, stutter out a curse, and tell Benny to go away. It's what he does normally.

Instead, he turns to Benny with an equally smug look, and curls his eyebrow up in the way he knows makes Benny's mouth run dry.

It even increases more when instead of shooting back a snarky reply, Ethan tugs Benny forwards and kisses him in the back corner of their math room. He's just lucky everyone's either doing homework or sleeping, including Mrs. Mackie, and don't notice them.

While Benny blinks owlishly at him, Ethan turns to finish the problem.

"Neither- I'm thinking about how glasses make your knees weak. And how that'll come in handy when we argue about what movie to watch and you refuse to see another Russell Crowe film."

And Benny doesn't really know _what _to say to that.

_**~.~.~**_

_**A/N: I kind of went off the deep end after Ethan got his glasses, so sorry xD Hope that was okay- it was raining and I haven't written anything in weeks and I just ran away with it. **_

_**Okay, but here's my little news broadcast: I've made a Bethan playlist! It's ALL of my "Bethan" songs, and I love it so much omfg. If you want to listen to it, go onto 8tracks and look up tyedyeindye, my username, or the playlist name "and after all, you're my wonderwall." Anyone who has read my other fic, "caught beneath the landslide" will get that joke ;D **_

_**Well, one down, twenty seven to go xD Have a lovely day!**_


End file.
